Adderall

>Ctrl+f >No adderall thread Hello anons. I've been curious for a long time about substances such as adderall. Essentially, I have come to realise that this continual stream of consciousness and mental noise that has accompanied me for most of my life is not normal. I'm not seeking focus as a means to increase productivity, but instead as a means to realign my life to areas of importance. I don't think this problem arises from excessive stimulation through media or tech. I'm perfectly capable of undergoing dopamine fasts, and spending time away from technology and civilisation, with no adverse effects. What I'm seeking is, simply, clarity. A purity of thought, unclouded by extraneous concerns. A couple of years ago, I experimented with Modafinil in an attempt to find something that could achieve this goal, but experienced absolutely no effect even with high doses. As for non-drug related activities that could assist, I already undertake good exercise and have a healthy diet. It seems that something more drastic may be the path to explore. Can any anons give information or anecdotes regarding their time on adderall or related stimulants that could solve this issue?

Adderall is really speedy. If you aren't looking for recreational or productivity use/abuse I think you may prefer Ritalin or vyvanse. You should be aware that using stimulants like these, even at regular therapeutic doses, will almost certainly entail some amount of dependency. Your baseline lethargy and lack of focus will worsen when you are not on the drug but will be a lot better when you are on it.

>>6048 Thank you for the response lainon. I'll certainly look into these. The dependency issue is, however, something of a concern. In your experience, is any dependency outweighed by the potential benefits? Apologies; my knowledge of stims is rather limited.

>>6054 Having done and lived with heavy stim users for many years i think the most dangerous thing is you finding your "new life" with them.

Just throwing it out there that it's very easy to abuse. I was legally prescribed, bullshitted through a psych appointment because I wanted pills to make me more productive, confident, fulfilled etc. I would stay up for 2-3 days on end, reading books, playing video games, etc. Focused on the task at end but not focusing on anything on a deeper or holistic level. You'll get your clarity, but it's a narrow focus. 3/10 don't recommend, unless you have very strong willpower (which begs the question: why use stimulants in the first place)

I've tried adderal, dexedrine, and ritalin. Adderal and dexedrine were not practical for me--too recreational. Sure, they increased focus but they also induced an unrealistic confidence e.g. "this essay I'm writing is going to change academia forever!!" I also felt a pull to increase dosage which is not sustainable long-term. There is a line in True Detective, "I feel like I've tapped into the main line of the universe". Dexedrine might make you feel like you're operating on another level, but I'm pretty sure it's just mania (i.e. your thinking is actually distorted). Ritalin has no recreational feeling for me. It increases focus, but I don't feel any better or any worse. There are side-effects, but they are manageable under 20 mg. "clarity, purity of thought" is not how I'd describe the feeling, unless I'm extremely engaged in a task and well-prepared for it. Typically it feels more like a slight anxiety pulling me towards practical purposes, "I must finish this...I shouldn't be wasting this time". Also, I feel like big picture thinking is weakened and a tendency towards tunnel vision and obsessiveness develops. The latter sounds bad, but they can be useful for some tasks. Psilocybin might be closer to what you're looking for imo. Zero productivity enhancement (unless you're an artist perhaps), but it allows you to step outside yourself and consider your life and future from a different perspective.

>>6054 >is any dependency outweighed by the potential benefits? If you're seriously asking this question then I don't think you should be around this stuff.

>>6054 The thing you have to understand is you're not dealing with just mental dependence. Its not like the dude who has to smoke weed every day because its a habit. It's physical. You will actually function worse when you aren't on stims, but "better" on them.. but there are caveats, I agree with what >>6067 said. You aren't going to be jonesing for Ritalin (unless you fuarrrk up real bad and get addicted to recreational doses). Its not a dangerous drug. In fact, you might come to dislike it and put off taking it, to your own detriment. It gives you a very specific kind of focus. If you actually have ADHD you will recognize it as the kind of focus that keeps you up to 5am coding or playing a video game, despite the fact that you have a bunch of other soykaf to do and even sleeping would have been a better use of your time. It changes the way you structure your life. You'll start planning your work around long several hour sprints followed by complete mental exhaustion instead of gradual progress throughout the day. It becomes difficult to care for yourself because you won't feel like eating at the proper times and when it finally wears off you'll be too drained to cook. This is especially true of the extended release pills. Doctors don't like the quick release but they're better. On the other hand there is a real benefit to taking stims. You will be able to maintain deep concentration for hours at a time. You won't be hungry or tired or distracted. At the end of the day I think the biggest problem with prescription stims is its hard to fit them into a conventional lifestyle. I always got the most out of them when I had plenty of free time to structure and optimize however I want. When 36 hours of coding or studying math followed by 12 hours of sleep was something I could do without getting fired. Just be careful with them and do not neglect your body. Monitor your weight and make sure you aren't collapsing from exhaustion at the end of every day. Remember, those 6 hours or so of perfect focus aren't such a good deal if the rest of your day is spent in zombie-mode in front of the TV.

>>6077 >It gives you a very specific kind of focus. If you actually have ADHD you will recognize it as the kind of focus that keeps you up to 5am coding or playing a video game, despite the fact that you have a bunch of other soykaf to do and even sleeping would have been a better use of your time. It changes the way you structure your life. Jesus Christ, you really nailed my experiences with it so far (been taking it for 4 months). How come doctors don't like prescribing instant release? I noticed that my doctor put me on XR too, I've actually considered asking her for a switch since I don't like how long the "focus" lasts. Taking it has been a real benefit for my day to day obligations but the negatives have been hard to balance. I'm guessing you're not on it anymore, has the zombie feeling gone away for you awhile after completely stopping?

>>6078 >How come doctors don't like prescribing instant release? There is a very good reason. So picture a graph of the drug in your bloodstream. You have peaks and troughs right? The higher those peaks the higher the addiction. Also the less effective the stim will be in the future. The harder the crash later on. I personally take mine in halves and quarters. It's very rare for me to consume and entire 10mg addy all at once even though it is my prescription. The slow release drugs handle this for you but can leave you with a long useless tail where you're still stimm'd but too burned out to do anything useful, still unable to sleep.

>>6078 If you want ir tell them you can't eat because the xr suppresses your appetite all day. They'll cut back your dose first but if you tell them it isn't working any more at the lower dose at your next med check they'll probably consider ir (they also might think about changing to a different drug but if you say something like "I don't want to keep experimenting with different meds, this works it just kills my appetite" they will probably listen.)

>>6078 >I'm guessing you're not on it anymore On and off. Coronavirus fuarrrked up my med check appointment so I didn't get a refill and I haven't had pills in a month or so. I could schedule another one but I'm just seeing how this plays out. I've gone up to 6 months off somewhat recently so I have a pretty good idea of how my life is on vs. off Ritalin. >has the zombie feeling gone away for you awhile after completely stopping? Yes, but it also can be mitigated with a proper (usually lower than what you have) dose and good sleep/nutrition. Eventually I realized I was feeling like soykaf because that's just how a person feels when they don't eat or drink for 12 hours at a time and then only get 4 hours of sleep. You have to make deliberate effort to take care of yourself. Your body isn't going to just tell you when it is hungry or tired any more. On the other hand, I am frustrated by how unproductive I am by comparison. Stims can be a crutch and it's hard to build back that mental discipline when you're used to being able to take pills when you want to work. Eventually I'd like to kick them completely but I don't think there's much of a point in doing that at the moment I'll probably go back on them when school starts in the fall.

I'm an ADHD anon with pretty severe executive dysfunction. It can be very hard for me to remember to do things, compute what order to do them in, not lose track of time, or get up after sitting at a computer chair. Out of necessity, I have an Adderall XR prescription -- I probably wouldn't be able to write this post if I weren't on it now. I am very drug intolerant, so I can hardly handle more than 10mg without headaches and bad emotional instability. I also take it only like once a week, or whenever I feel like I especially need it. It's always a compromise with a host of unpleasant side effects. As other anons have noted, an Adderall high is very much a 'narrow focus'. It is not going to make you more intelligent or give you life goals. In fact, I'd say that it's essential to strategize with its usage -- it's easy to end up spinning your wheels and very focusedly doing nothing for 6 hours. So far as 'clarity' goes, it does help, but my mind is innately messy. At an objective, neurological level, my brain has difficulty regulating dopamine compared to others. It's not an issue that has to do with my environment, habits, or mindset. I don't recommend trying to reach the purity of thought you want through stims -- especially considering that Adderall has a different neurological effect on people with executive dysfunction and those who don't.

>>6077 >It gives you a very specific kind of focus. If you actually have ADHD you will recognize it as the kind of focus that keeps you up to 5am coding or playing a video game, despite the fact that you have a bunch of other soykaf to do and even sleeping would have been a better use of your time. Exactly this. My doctor decided to put me back on Vyvanse recently (I took it through most of middle and high school, but stopped when I went to college). I took it once and ended up doing a lot of coding that day, but I was also completely neglecting my dog. The thing is, I completely realized at the time that I was neglecting him and felt like soykaf for it, but I just kept on coding anyway instead of giving him any attention or even taking him outside. I decided to stop taking it after that day.

>>6047 >A couple of years ago, I experimented with Modafinil in an attempt to find something that could achieve this goal, but experienced absolutely no effect even with high doses Theres a known gene expression that makes it so adrafinil and its variants have no effect on you. Personally I find it really helps when I take it sporadically but theres solid biological reasons why heavy doses can have no effect which also explain the wildly different experiences people report on it.

I want to share my experience as someone who was prescribed ADD meds as early as 1st-2nd grade. My mother was a lazy bipolar piece of soykaf, and took my half-sister's advice to castrate my typical little boy behavior by drugging me up with the hot new craze, Ritalin. Mom took me to the psych, told him what a naughty little soykaf I was and gave out a prescription with a diagnosis of ADD (Non-hyperactive Inattentiveness). Never saw him again, never went to a psych, never got any strategies to be better at organizing or studying. It was all just so my mother could have me zombied out by the time I got home so she could go fuarrrk other men or watch Oprah. With that out of the way, I took Ritalin, to Adderall, to Stratera from 1st to 11th grade. Adderall is garbage if you don't have ADD, you will just be zonked out hyperfocused on any one thing and unable to sleep at night. You will feel terrible off of it once you've taken it long enough, XR or not. Methylphenidates are the better option, but not without similar problems. Ritalin had me zombified, while Stratera was useful but again without strategizing, ended up in me playing video games for hours. I got better grades once I got off the meds, and slowly figured out that I'd been gaslit by doctors and my parents for most of my childhood. Take these drugs at your own risk, they are not casual toys, they are powerful and prone to abuse and failure.

Does anyone who takes Addy or other ADHD meds have experience with it making your extremities feel cold and numb? Any way to stop it?

>>6394 hand and foot warmers lol

>>6047 Go to hell, Kyler. We're all watching in case you do it again.

>>6402 Maybe you were Jaihan or cumstarch, I honestly can't keep them straight.

ADHD anons, how does adderall at prescribed doses compare to nicotine?

>>6407 They aren't particularly comperable. Methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta...) is kind of similar to nicotine I guess but I'd say it's more similar to caffeine if anything. Adderall on the other hand is more like a slow release version of coke IMO.

I sold it back in college. Made a bunch of money during exams. I found it pretty helpful for long study/work sessions.

>>6409 an addy script is a money printer.

its silly to think a drug is inherently evil, a drug is neutral just a tool and because its not evil to say that universally it produces bad results is silly. Surely there is some people, which I know some but trying not to be anecdotal, who take it and have quality of life improvements while not turning into a fiend/zombie whatever. I am not one of those people in fact I escalated to meth from adderall. This actually just makes me more angry that people, especially on chans, cant seem to accept or maybe dont even bother to think that themselves or that guy they knows experience with it doesnt say anything about adderall just how that person reacts to adderall. All in all I think its overprescribed, and id avoid starting it if you are in a stressful point in your life or struggling with addiction Wait till things are stable, try it, and see if it actually improves your mental well being independent of how efficient or whatever it makes you.

>When you want to take adderall but it does nothing for you because you have A.D.D.

>>6426 It will still do something for you.

>>6429 I meant it won't get me "High" like it does for others. It balances me out and keeps me focused. Hence it "Does nothing" for me.

Adderall is dogshit. Why? It's levoamphetamine contents. It's been proven levo hardly does soykaf for actually treating ADHD, it literally just fuarrrks with your heart and does no good. dextroamphetamine actually does the work, and then only reason adderall was created was to get a patent to make money of. Take Vyvanse, you'll get pure dextro, less side effects.

>>6663 >Adderall is dogshit. Why? It's levoamphetamine contents. It's been proven levo hardly does soykaf for actually treating ADHD https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/769721/ claims otherwise.

Note: ``minimal brain dysfunction'' is an early name of ADHD

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/365123/ claims significant (P-value < .05) cardiovascular effects of D. Did >>6663 mean L has them worse?

One thing I noticed was when I was put on a starting (i.e. the smallest) dose of a stimulant, I didn't feel any effect, so I got a higher dose and felt a slight effect, and a higher dose again but still only a slight effect, until I got the highest dose. But recently I tried the smallest dose again, and as expected I didn't feel any effect, but this time I paid more attention to how I was thinking, and noticed it was much clearer than when it is not in my system at all. Which is really weird because I don't `feel' it's effect but it's there. Well, at least now each prescription gets me much much more than I need to use, which I might sell, or just keep it in case excrement becomes strongly tangent with airflow systems.

When I started out they put me on 10MG instant release (lowest dose at the time), because my insurance wouldn't cover the extended release version. It would spike hard on the come up then drop off a cliff about 5-6 hours later. Hated it. Left me feeling weak, joints would ache, headaches, felt like I was getting over the flu. Tried moving to half a tablet twice a day, still left me feeling like soykaf. Moved down to 5MG instant release, and now finally I'm on 5MG extended release. So far this seems to be the best one I've tried. We'll see how it works out.

>>6670 Ouch. My first dose was 2.5 mg instant release.

>>6669 Sort of a similar experience for me. When I started taking meds I went up the the highest dose pretty quick but then once I understood the side effects better I settled on something much lower.

>>6669 The "effect/feeling" your talking about is the high from it. The reason you still feel clear headed in small doses is because it's working but not getting you high.

>>6394 I didn't experience it with Ritalin, I do feel that when Im on Vyvanse(the first days mostly). Both of them make me anxious as fuarrrk though.

I tried Adderall recently and it was pretty helpful. A lot of soykaf got done, but it turned me into a total robot. As an introvert I already have little desire to start conversations with people or interact with them more than I have to, but on adderall it was on another level entirely. I could go through my day at work and by the end of the day I would realize that I hadn't spoken more than a few necessary syllables to anyone all day. The robot effect sucked, but the ability to actually get the fuarrrk out of bed and get things done is very useful. I'm in my late 20s and never had a script for the stuff. Is it at all likely that I could be able to get one at this point, or am I just screwed because I'm practically a senior citizen?

>>6047 Uppers are not a long-term solution.